Ice-T: Gun Rights Are Civil Rights

Rapper Ice-T has narrated a documentary that frames the gun control argument in language the left has long avoided–gun rights are civil rights.

In other words, they are rights inherent to American citizens. Or as the HHS.gov website puts it: “Civil rights are personal rights guaranteed and protected by the U.S. Constitution.”

Therefore, just as rights to speak freely, to vote, and to practice one’s religion are civil rights, so too are the rights embodied in the 2nd Amendment. This is the central point of the documentary, Assaulted: Civil Rights Under Fire.

The documentary accomplishes this by showing that the right to keep and bear arms was hedged in by our Founding Fathers as a right that existed long before American government did. As such, it is a right the government can neither give nor take away–a right that “shall not be infringed.” It is sacrosanct, like other civil rights.

The documentary successfully uses the experiences of blacks during the turbulent 1950s and ’60s to show that the only thing that saved many from the machinations of the Ku Klux Klan was the Klan’s knowledge that their would-be victims could shoot back. And as the film’s director Kris Koenig told Newsmax, this ability to defend one’s life is the central facet of this civil right:

It is part of the Bill of Rights–it’s part of our natural rights as human beings to have the ability to have self-defense, and yet our lawmakers have looked over that civil right and are willing to embrace restrictions in the name of votes.

The documentary runs approximately 80 minutes and is showing at select theaters nationally.